The Wu Oujiang Dialect Vowel Evolution

This doctoral dissertation represents a systematic research and analysis of modern pronunciations of archaic finals in Oujiang dialect within the municipality of Wenzhou and its surrounding districts. As a result of geographical barriers, aspects of the archaic finals of Oujiang dialect within different localities of the Wenzhou and its surrounding districts have undergone variations in their change and evolution. In some localities, phonetic elements of archaic finals have been preserved while in other areas new developments have taken place.Thus, through comparative analysis of Oujiang dialect in different localities within the same time period based on current research we can find clues to the underlying process of evolution and the various stages of development of Oujiang dialect. Based on research materials gathered by the writer this essay systematically categorises the evolutionary stages of development of Oujiang dialect from archaic finals to their present-day form and attempts to demonstrate their evolutionary process. This essay is divided into five sections.The Foreword introduces previous research work regarding the study of Oujiang dialect, as well as the purpose, significance and research materials and research methodology adopted in this dissertation. In the course of conducting comparative phonetic analysis within the same time period, and based on current research, the writer's mainly relied on research materials gathered from 32 locations within the city of Wenzhou and its districts while making reference to previous related research results.The first section is a general introduction describing the overall aspects of the Wenzhou area including its geography, history, administration, population, and dialects. The situation regarding dialects and minority languages in Wenzhou is fairly complex. Apart from Oujiang dialect, there are seven other dialects and minority languages with overlapping distributions within this region.The second section, The Evolution and Historical Development of Finals in Oujiang Dialect, presents a systematic, synchronic comparison, of the modern pronunciations of archaic Yang finals (古阳声韵) , archaic Yin finals (古阴声韵) , and archaic abrupt tone finals (古入声韵) within Oujiang dialect, based on their arrangement as categorised by the Guang Yun. At the same time, it presents analysis and categorisation of the stages of evolution that these finals have undergone and attempts to make a rational interpretation of the anomalies occurring within this research. In Oujiang dialect, some archaic Yang finals (古阳声韵 ) and archaic abrupt tone finals (古入声韵) have already lost their terminal consonants. In terms of a chronological perspective, when archaic Yang finals (古阳声韵) and their correlated abrupt tone finals (古入声韵) lose their terminal consonants they will both undergo a synchronous and identical change to the same final form (阳入同变) .In other words, the vowels of these archaic finals will undergo the same form of change in their evolution, and regardless of the manner in which they change, these changes will remain consistent with each other.The third section, A Comparison of Dongtou Oujiang Dialect of Migrant Dialect-speakers with Oujiang Dialect from its Various Point of Origin, first introduces migrations to the counties and villages in the Dongtou District and the situation of the subdialects in these localities. When populations from various parts of the Wenzhou area migrated to these islands the dialects that they brought with them influenced one another and mixed with one another. The interaction between these dialects led to phonetic changes and thus it could be said that the dialects on these islands represent a hybrid of several subdialects of the Oujiang dialect. Within the Oujiang dialect of Dongtou District we can find that some have preserved phonetic characteristics of dialects as spoken in the places from where the island migrants first came while others have developed different characteristics over the course of two hundred years. This secti...